Beware of Slenderman

In Wisconsin, two 12-year-old girls tried to kill a girlfriend, inspired by a terrible meme. They were judged as adults

In 2014, all of America was discussing a terrible crime in Wisconsin: two 12-year-old girls, inspired by an Internet folklore about a character named Slenderman, tried to kill their girlfriend, causing her 19 stab wounds. In January 2018, the Hazlitt publication released a material telling about the consequences of the Slenderman case - and how the criminals were judged. Medusa tells who Slenderman is, how he brought teenagers to a crime - and what was later.

Employment for murder

On May 30, 2014, Morgan Geyser was performed for 12 years. She celebrated her birthday with her two best friends - Anissa Weer and Payton Solfner, who were the girls called Bella. All of them lived in Vokish, a small city in the American state of Wisconsin, and studied at the same school; Morgan was friends with Bella from the fourth grade, but recently they talked more and more with the anissa - both girls loved to spend time on the Creepypasta website, where they collected terrible stories from all over the Internet.

The holiday was celebrated at the Rollerdrome, where friends rode, laughed and generally spent time, as it should be twelve. All three spent the night at Morgan’s houses, and the next day they asked for a geyser to take a walk from the parents. At some point, Geyser and Weer invited Bella to play hide and seek in the forest by the road. There Morgan took out a knife that she pulled from her parental cuisine. She handed it to the anissa, but she handed him back to her friend - and stated that Morgan should “do this”. “I won’t be told me until you tell me,” Geyser said. Anissa backed away and said: "Now." “I am very sorry,” Morgan whispered in Bella's ear. After that, she inflicted 19 blows to her friend with a knife: in her hands, legs and torso. As the doctors later said, if one of them were slightly deeper, they would no longer manage to save the girl.

Summer managed to crawl to the nearest road - there she was discovered by a cyclist who called 911. The police arrested Anissa and Morgan a few hours near the state’s main highway. They were sent to one of the forest reserves of Wisconsin - there, they believed, Slenderman lived, a “thin man”, a creature that, as they told the investigators, made them catch a girlfriend.

The story of Slenderman

Slenderman is the case when a folklore character has an author and date of birth. He first appeared in June 2009 during the competition on the Internet forum of the Someting Awful. The participants of the competition had to edit ordinary photos so that something paranormal appeared in them. One of the visitors to the forum, Eric Knudsen, added a strange figure of a lanky person with unnaturally long hands, dressed in a black costume in black and white photos from playgrounds.

By the time Heiser and Weer stumbled upon the stories about Slenderman, his mythology has grown and existed separately from original pictures. In particular, pseudo -documentary videos about meetings with Slenderman appeared on the Internet; Several video games came out about this hero. Slenderman is most often described as a person without a face with the hands-pliers, with which he grabs his victims. He lives in the forest and can drive his victims crazy or call them paranoia; However, the fate of the people who fell into the hands of Slenderman is usually not specified.

Having familiarized himself with the text of the texts about Slenderman on the Creepypasta website, Geyser and Weer came to the conclusion that he lives in a castle in one of the forest reserves of Wisconsin. The girls were sure that they should become followers of Slenderman and live with him - otherwise, they believed, the creature would kill their loved ones. The only way to become a follower of Slenderman was the murder.

Geyser and Weier have developed a plan for the murder of SkiTner since December 2013; At first, they were going to kill a friend while she was sleeping in the house of the geyser after a birthday party, but at the last moment Morgan changed his mind.

Consequences

Despite almost two dozen wounds, Summer spent only six days in the hospital. Her health quickly recovered. The Governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker announced on August 13, 2014 the state of state in honor of the girl’s favorite color - purple. Three months after the assassination attempt, in September 2014, Bella returned to school classes.

The crime fell into federal news: they wrote a lot about it and spoke in the context of the influence of the Internet on a fragile children's mind. In 2016, a two -hour documentary film “Beware of Slenderman” was released on the HBO channel; In it, in particular, it was told in detail that the Heiser father suffers from schizophrenia. As it turned out, this disease from an early age also developed at Morgan itself - she often heard voices in her head; Sometimes she had hallucinations. At some point, it began to seem to her that a man should be followed everywhere; The girl called him "it." The only to whom Morgan talked about her visions was anise; When a friend showed her Slenderman, the geyser decided that it was he who persecuted her a few years before. Several doctors believe that after the attempt and during the interrogation of the police, the geyser took place a psychotic episode. In prison, Morgan was called - allegedly by the teaching of Weyer - a “psycho -backed bitch”.

According to the laws of the state of Wisconsin, children from 10 years old are judged as adults, if they are accused of deliberate murder; They can get up to 65 years in prison. As explained in the Hazlitt material, the law on this was adopted in the 1990s and is associated with the theory popular in the 1980s that America is threatened with “superkthe”, cold-blooded killers who become such in early childhood and which must be isolated from society. Studies have long called this theory into question, and also showed the effectiveness of special vessels for minors, but cancel the law is not so simple.

In order to translate the Geyser and Weier’s case to the court for minors, their lawyers had to convince the judge of such a step - while the judge in Wisconsin was elected, and Judge Michael Boren, who led the processes of the girls, was elected a very conservative population of the district where Vokisha is located. In addition, the geyser lawyers, due to the specifics of local laws, could not mention schizophrenia as a reason for changing the status of Morgan. The judge refused both the accused, motivating this by the fact that they "become older every day." Among other things, his decision meant that the geyser would not receive any drugs that could help her mental state - only a year and a half later the parents Morgan managed to find a loophole that allowed her to send her to a guarded hospital for a while. When she returned to jail, the geyser tried to commit suicide, after which the girl, who by that time was 15, was placed back to the hospital. There she is still located.

Court

Anissu Weer was judged first - in September 2017. Her lawyers successfully introduced the court the theory by which Morgan, as it were, “infected” her friend with her obsession and manipulated her to commit a murder. The jury recognized her innocent due to insanity and recommended that Judge Boren be sentenced to the girl at least for three years in a hospital for mentally ill. At the end of December, the judge sentenced Weer to 25 years - this is the maximum possible term in such a case; Three years later, the girl will be able to apply for early exemption under supervision.

Morgan Geyser and her family entered into an agreement with the charge: she pleaded guilty of attempted murder of the first degree; The prosecutor, in response to this, agreed to the formulation of the sentence, which reduces the possible prison term of the girl, in addition, she will also serve him in the hospital, and not in an adult prison. The geyser is also recognized as innocent due to insane. The sentence will be sentenced to her by the same judge Boren on February 1, 2018; She can get up to 40 years in the clinic; When she comes out, he will also depend on the same judge who will consider the appeals of early release.

The Payton Summer family, like many residents of Voki, believe that the girls easily got off. “Forgiveness is not discussed,” their lawyer said Hazlit, adding that there is only one victim in this case. According to him, Bella's parents intend to come to each court hearing, at which the judge Boren will consider the Heiser and Weier petitions that they were released from a psychiatric clinic.

After the attempt to kill Bella, access to the Creepypasta website on school computers and ipads in the Vokisha district was blocked. In May 2018, Sony Pictures will release the Slenderman horror about the monster that haunts teenagers in a small American city. There is no reference to the case by Weer and the Geyser in it - however, the father of the anissa has already stated that the fact of the appearance of such a movie is “exceptionally unpleasant” and hopes that the cinemas of the district will refuse to show it.

Update on February 2 . Judge Boren sentenced Morgan Geyser to the maximum period - 40 years of forced treatment in a psychiatric clinic.

Alexander Gorbachev